Creative musings in bright colors

Posts tagged ‘Sally Hansen’

I decided to use a different gold for stamping this time as I have finally run out of my go-to stamping gold (Good as Gold by Essie) and this one does NOT work as well! The image actually picks up, it just won’t transfer because the polish dries so fast that I can’t stamp quickly enough. I need more Essie! I ended up having to hand-paint some of these gold lines, and since my nails were so itty bitty I wasn’t super invested. In retrospect, I am pretty unhappy about that because the manicure ended up quite pretty!

I also finally invested in some MoYou stamping plates (I owned none) when they had their cyber Monday sale….and I have to say I don’t love most of them. The designs are great and the etching is good (on all but one plate), but they are so small! I usually wear my nails longish, and the plates I got just won’t cover my whole nail. Maybe I should have gone with the fewer designs per plate setup, but then only the very center of each image would transfer. Its rather annoying!

Overall, another manicure with a lot of potential and mediocre execution. I also only have two photos because I did these as I came back from winter break and was too busy unpacking to take many nail photos. Also, apparently St Louis does NOT get sun in the winter (I thought Boston was bad, this is worse!) so there are no sunlight photos for this mani…or for a lot of the upcoming ones as well. Sorry!

This came out better than I expected! It is very hard to see the teal metallic stamping polish, but the colors go nicely and I have missed geometrics 🙂

When I start a manicure I generally have an idea in mind ahead of time. With this one, I just went “i want to use that one sparkly blurple with teal flakie polish” and tried to find coordinating colors. Don’t ask me why coloring in some of the thinnest lines on one of my stamping plates was deemed a good idea, but the result is pretty cool!

I need to remember to buy more flakie polishes, they have wonderful color shifts and finishes but are not difficult to remove. Also they tend to have enough going on in them that even if you paint quickly enough to cause bubbles (because rushes are a real thing) you can’t see them!

This mani took a bit of work because of the double stamping! And also because working with sheer polish makes me nervous so it takes a lot longer to get anything done.

The steps to this one were basically sheer polish, stamp with gold dots, then stamp with rainbow dots. The exciting part was that I got a liquid metallic polish from Sally Hansen (back when mirror nails were all the rage) to stamp! It is such a perfect shiny gold but it usually dries to fast for stamping. Which goes to show that this plate is well etched. And since I was stamping in colors over it, I didn’t care if every part of the design was 100% filled in. I’ll have to play with it some more in the near future!

That is a LOT of colors. Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Maybe I’ll actually have some seasonal nails up starting next week? I have a bunch of snowflake and dark color manis done, but I haven’t even put them on my computer much less edited them yet!

Copycat Claws posted a blue-and-white moroccan tile design that I love and want to copy… but while I am in the hospital I should probably avoid bright blue nails! At least as I started out. So I decided that if I couldn’t do blue, I could at least try nude! (To be fair I pained these back in July, before I realized no one would care much about my nails). That said, these came out well if I do say so myself!

I used four nude-toned polishes and two shimmery toppers to make this. Since I only have one clear stamper that works well, I had to do each nail individually. It wasn’t DIFFICULT but I did take a long time!

I’ll meet o keep in mind that I have to try this in blue at a later point! I do admit though, it isn’t very harvest-y, and unfortunately I have to admit I didn;t have time to put together a real Thanksgiving mani! But the rest of this week is at least fall-themed :-p. Hope you enjoyed!

This mani tried so hard, but ultimately fell to the age-old adage: do not stamp over glitter with glitter (use a creme or a metallic). I started with a purple/gold multichrome but I was working too fast and my nails bubbled! So obviously I had to make a galaxy…but every time I tried to sponge on a new color I ended up hating it! I ended up just covering all the other sponged work with a dark purple glitter and some gold. Oh well!

As mentioned above, I also wish I hadn’t stamped with a glitter. Metallics just work much better. I was trying to make everything sparkly but the end result is that it is difficult to see the designs! I’ll need to re-use this stamp again soon, it is super cool.

Every time I work with Valerie I wish I used it more, but I am always afraid to! Zoya keeps discontinuing their prettiest polish. Zoya: MORE GLITTERS! YOUR GLITTERS ARE GREAT! Anyway…hope you enjoyed! And let the moral be do not stamp with glitter over a glittery base!

Although I don’t think the photos came out that well, I LOVED wearing this mani! The dark olive green with copper and stamped with copper…and just ugh. It was so shimmery!

I don’t have much else to say about this mani really? It has double stamping, which I remain proud of, and I absolutely love Nerida Singer when I can talk myself into wearing this polish. I still own too many olive green polishes and I refuse to part with any of them!

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Friday’s post is a bit less exciting (I don’t like the mani, but I feel compelled to post my failures so others do not repeat them!) so I wanted something pretty in advance!

I have done phoenix nails before, but possibly never this insanely bright! I got lucky that one of my stamping plates already had all these images, or I would have been painting flames for years :-p

The design itself was inspired by @nails4cocktails, although I didn’t have holo polish in the right colors, so I just added some shimmer on top. I really need to get Fairy Dust by China Glaze, I keep winging it with my glitter toppers!

This was a lot of fun, and not nearly as time consuming as I had feared! I was searching for some inspiration to use for the 31 Day Challenge options for art, flag, or supernatural (since I only post one out of every three days), and was stumped on flag. Then I remember my day 5/blue nails and how much I loved the porcelain, so I went searching for vases or ceramic art. And I ended up somehow on teacups…and with this.

The inspiration for this design really is art, but its teacup glass art! I don’t know where I can buy this set but I WANT it. It is so pretty! Unfortunately, using this design meant I needed to have my nails mostly naked underneath to mimic the see-through glass, and that I had to double dot with gold and a color!

Despite that, the art only took maybe 1.5 hours, which is pretty good for lots of dots! I am very grateful that I have real dotting tools now…trying to get this mani sizes of dots out of my hairpins and paperclips would have been difficult.

This also gave me a chance to use Liquid Gold, which I bought back when metallic semi-foil polishes (that show every ridge and divot in the nail) were a huge craze. I only ever got a gold and a silver, and I seldom use them because top coat ruined the finish and they, as mentioned, show every nail problem! They work really well for dots though 😀

Hope you enjoyed! There is only one day left in the challenge for me, and it is inspired by others! Since something like 60% of all my nail art is inspired by SOMETHING, I think I might just grab one from the vault again.

I was torn whether to post this for flower day or color day, and I realized that the whole purpose of this mani was that it was pink. Lots of pink. And a few colors that go well with pink, like gold and white. So voila! Inspired by the color pink and things one wears with pink.

The design was inspired by Nails by Erin. However, when I finished trying to mimic her, I decided I didn’t like how boring my white nails were! And as previously mentioned, gold looks good with pink, so I added some gold glitter to the top of my all-white nails, and I kinda love it!

My only real complaint about this mani is that I used red striping tape to make the negative space lines and it kinda bled? So my naked nails look a little red-der than usual and the white has a red tinge. Oh well! Still looks cool :-p

I am kind of amazed that the 31 Day Challenge is almost over! I remember this being a LOT harder to keep up with…but then again this is the only year that I didn’t post daily. This M-W-F posting schedule really makes my life at lot easier! And hopefully I can keep it up. Thus far in residency no one has made a fuss about my colorful nails (then again, I haven’t been painting rainbows or neons yet).

This mani ended up boring and almost ugly. I like the base polish a lot but every time I try to come up with some color to use over it, I turn to dark purple-grey or gold! And for some reason most of the designs end up wonky looking.

I don’t know why I picked this stamp (which seems to be a trend this week) but it ended up looking like rungs on a ladder or maybe the straps on a fancy jacket? If fancy jackets came in murky purple tones? I don’t know!

Anyway, leaving all this aside, the 31 Day Challenge starts this weekend! I am not going to be participating every day because I don’t have enough manis backlogged and I certainly don’t have enough time to paint and edit that much, but I am going to keep to posting three times a week and matching my nails of the day to that days prompt! I think there will be a few where I jump a day forward or backwards, but I should have most of them sorted out. I love seeing what everyone puts together for the #31DC2018!

How about something pink and gold? I figure with the flowers it is suitably summer-y too!

The design was inspired by Nails by Erin but my pink base is an AWFUL polish that takes 3 coats and never dries (I need a better barbie pink) and so I wanted to do more things with those nails. I don’t know if this counts as over doing it, but I actually liked it!

Using Erin’s nails as a template got me very excited about gold dots. I love adding dots to things. In this case, added too many gold dots to things…specifically my middle finger. Oops. it would have looked better with more white space 😀

You guys, I just had a DAY (but Eva, it’s only 3pm! Yes but I woke up at 5:30, so it’s been a whole day and I am over it). Which means that today’s post will be short and sweet because I mostly want to bang my head into a wall. Repeatedly. And this mani? Not helping.

The base here is three coats of Delaney by Zoya. In the bottle this has a bit of a duochrome/multichrome finish, but that did not translate to the nail (which was pretty much as expected). This is, I think, the last of my haul from winning the Nail Art Canada holiday challenge…and of all the Zoya polishes I received, this is the one I was least excited about. So it went lest. This polish is basically a muted dull metallic purple, and I already have Zoya Gadia, which is amazing. So yah, this is three thin coats, and it looks fine but I have prettier version of this in my stash already.

For the design, I ended up doing a purple-to-white lace stamping gradient, getting bored, and adding a metric ton of dots! I think I went overboard I really need to stop trying to do lace gradients over purple, this is probably the third time I have tried something like this, and to date I have liked none of them!

And that’s all for today! I know it isn’t great, but I’m working off my backlog. This one and the next post are just not my favorites, but then it should get good again (I tend to edit the photos in waves of things-I-love and things-I-dislike, and we are in a dislike wave, Monday’s post was the end of a love wave). Ok. Too much train of thought. Enjoy!

This is a bit of a sad day: tomorrow I leave Philly for St Louis. So, this is my last nail art post while in Philadelphia. Philly was where I first discovered nail art, and in the last 7 years my collection has gone from 2 polishes to over 400. I was thinking of posting a pretty skyline design I did, but I ran out of time to edit it (this is becoming a theme) so you’ll have to make do with some shimmery leaves.

This is the mani I created out of my pastel teal swatches, and so there are more teals than you might imagine! I did a dry brush of each of the 4 colors (three cremes and one holo) over each other, and then double stamped over the top with a gold glitter and then a green holo glitter. I really like how it came out!

I am glad I went for the dry brush technique, the bases all ended up looking roughly the same by the time I got to stamping. I also think this is the first time I’ve actually liked stamping the same image twice? Usually I try too hard or the colors are awkward together. But green and gold always works!

Initially, I was going to stamp gold then black, but my eyes fell on Dragon which I haven’t used in probably a year, and I grabbed it. A England polishes always stamp so well! It makes sense, since basically all of them are one-coaters. Adina is nuts. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And goodbye Philly! My next post will be from St Louis…but since I move in on Monday we probably won’t have internet for a few days. Sorry! I will also have some freehand art up eventually…I do have some in the vault I just haven’t edited that either, I know it’s been a lot of stamping post recently!

I have no excuse for this going up in the afternoon…I finished editing last night and just forgot that today is a Wednesday! Anyway. I painted these in early April, as the daffodils were finally emerging from the (very late) snow! I also rather like that I found a way to use this stamp that doesn’t make all my fingers look the same 🙂

Since this was painted on top of a swatch test post, I started with a different color blue polish on each nail. To make them uniform, I basically dry-brushed each color over the others so the end result was a medium light blue with shimmer in it. I wanted there to be a faint wispy cloud background, and I think it looks rather cool! You can see that best on my pinky and thumb.

After the blue cloudy background had dried, I used advanced stamping (aka coloring in the stamp while it is on the stamper) and applied it to my nails. One of my last minute decisions with this was to use a dark orange in the very center of the flowers and then a lighter yellow-leaning peach for the rest of the middle. I love how it came out! I ended up goggle image searching daffodils to make sure I had the right shade of orange (all the daffodils near my apartment are yellow-on-yellow which is not nearly as much fun), and it also gave me a chance to use Freedom of Peach again! I don’t like this color on my nails as a base but it clearly works as flower centers :-p

This is getting posted today because it was the only thing I had time to edit last night (well, let’s be honest…this morning. It is currently 1am). Anyway, it wasn’t sunny outside at any point while I had these on my nails, so there are no outdoor photos! Made it easier to put together the post.

For this mani, I ended up swirling my dark red swatch test glitters together and making a random red background. With all the various red glitters and gold glitters, the final design is more sparkly than I would usually go for! There are 4 reds and 3 golds involved! Yikes. I need to make up my mind which colors to use and what to do!

That said, I did get to use my layered stamping plate (all the flowers are a gold stamp then a black stamp) and I love it! It isn’t as though it actually takes less time to double stamp than it does to simply color in a single stamp, but it makes me happy anyway. Hope you enjoyed!

Why oh why do I have so many nude polishes? I will end up doing three, yes THREE comparison posts with nudes (pastel nudes, which are up today, pinky nudes, and neutral nudes, both of which will be co-posted on Wednesday). Anyway, on to the “pastel” nudes!

These are the lightest nudes in my collection, which is to say pale creme colored polishes. I have, today, two cremes, one jelly, one shimmer, and one holo. Three of them ended up being identical and I am certainly parting with one! The others I will keep, just because nudes are darn useful (especially given that I start working in the hospital full-time in June).

Prospect Park Bloom took three thick coats and was STILL not completely opaque. It also basically didn’t dry. It was 99 cents, which was why I bought it initially, but I think I’m going to let it go! Cherish stands out because it is both darker and filled with holo shards. I Nude It has very very subtle shimmer that puts it in a hair darker than Boho Babe and Prosecco, which are to my eye complete dupes. I like the brush that L’oreal uses much better than the giant OPI brush, but Prosecco has a bit more polish than Boho, and both work fine.

I decided to go with an art deco pattern, since my nails are STILL pointy-shaped and I really only like geometric things on pointy nails. The stamp is from BP plate L054, the source of most of my geometric patterns! I then colored bits of the design in gold (after stamping, I really should have colored in the design on the stamper head, but this was faster), and added some black and gold dots. I was debating throwing in a fourth color (likely red) but decided to leave it as-is. The dots really helped! For once my “if it doesn’t look completed, add dots” worked 🙂

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! And maybe this was useful (basically, you can pay $5 for L’oreal that is the same color and ease of use as a $10 OPI). Also sorry this post is late…but I technically made it up before midnight so Monday!!

Light blues: I should start by saint that hate light blue polish. I kept thinking as I was laying out these polishes “why do I never wear any of these?” I feel like for all of my other swatch tests (and there will be quite a few more) there were a couple polishes I gravitated towards for base colors or nail art, and with this set of blue there was nothing that I found exciting. To be fair, if I need a pastel blue I grab Zoya Blu and if I need a medium blue I grab one of my other three blue Zoya cremes…so it is really only the range between pastel and medium blue where I have this problem.

While swatching, I realized WHY I hate using these shades of blue. None of them are opaque enough! Ugh. Breezy took three THICK coats and even so was barely opaque. Cinderella was legitimately still see-through where my free edge is and this was with three thick coats. Boat only took three regular coats but is a bit thicker than I would like as a polish, and Rather is both a bit thick and dries matte (which is why these swatch photos do not have top coat). In summary, all of these polishes took three coats, and Breezy and Cinderella were still not quite opaque at three thick coats. That said, I do love the pink shimmer in Cinderella (I would believe this polish to be the color of glass slippers), and the slightly grey finish to Boat. I cannot stand the subtle frost in Breezy, and I am probably just getting rid of this polish since I have Blu which I know I love.

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Pastel teals: I own three very very similar pastel teal polishes because unlike the blues, I love pastel teal! It is such a pretty soft color. I basically wanted a pale teal and a pale green…but a pale green looks much like a pale teal! The three of these (minus my pinky of course) ended up being very close in color, but not quite dupes!

The holo polish, Jaded, took only two thin coats, the rest were three. Worries was slightly more jelly-like than the other two, and so I used thicker coats, but it dried quickly so overall the finishes were the same. In terms of comparisons, Tiana is the palest of the three, while Worries is the closest to green rather than teal. Envy is slightly more blue and slightly brighter than Tiana, but they are very close! It does have a better formula (thinner but just as pigmented). I bought Worries and Tiana when I ran out of my first bottle of Envy (this is my third, I think) and since I use pastels a lot I just kept all three. I don’t honestly think I need them all, but I think I might keep them anyway? Tiana is the one that I could part with most easily, as Worries is more green and Envy does have the best finish! I just threw Jaded in since the base color is the same, but wheeee holo!

Another day for nail art! Kinda. This is another one that I want to repeat over just one color, likely a dark color. In terms of the polishes I chose to swatch, all but my pinky look really darn close in the bottle! That said, in the bottle, the shimmer in this polish is very strong and I always forget that doesn’t translate onto the nail! It looks like it COULD be a medium blue :-p

All polishes took three coats to be opaque, other than Yoga which only took two. When swatching these, I found a new favorite! I had forgotten about the Sally Hansen and it is beautiful! Possibly my favorite even if it is the least metallic. Estelle is the most metallic, but actually ends up looking streaky. I think I’ll stick with Tart, now I just need to decide if I want to get rid of Estelle all together or keep both her and Tart! Decisions, decisions.

All that said, I actually really hate Toga and Lit-Teal just for the names. Puns are cute, but not when you turn them into multi word hyphenated messes! Just for that (and because I seldom wear polishes that are nothing BUT glitter) I am going to part ways with Lit-Teal. I just hate typing it, and I never wear it!

For my design, I just double stamped with the same pattern…which looks amazing over the darker blues and kinda fades away over the lighter ones. I used plate BP – L003 and stamped with Zoya Yummy and then Color Club Over the Moon. Hope you enjoyed!

How about a bit of a change of pace? Geometric AND pointy nails! I already showed one mani with pointed nails last week, but I think I have a total of 6 or so of them (before my nails got long enough to cut back to at least squoval). Anyway, here is another new polish as well!

What you see here are three thin coats of Cashmere Wrap by CND. I really like the color, it is a bit of a grey/taupe pastel nude (in a few weeks I’ll do a comparison of similar colors I own, like KBShimmer Caught on Tape). It is basically perfect for a neutral nude base. However, I this is my first CND polish and there are a few things I dislike! Much like OPI, the brush head is too large and barely works on my poor tiny pinky (which is to say polish goes all over my cuticles and skin around my nail despite my best efforts). I also prefer round or square bottles over these elongated ones, but at least the brush handle was easy to hold and work with.

When I went hunting on the internet for nail designs that look good with “stiletto” nails, I kept coming across geometric patterns! One in particular caught my eye, this one on pinterest from an artist called “manicured” which unfortunately makes her impossible to find!

As you guys have probably figured out, I love geometric nail art. I know it got really big in 2017 and everyone has moved on but me, but I am still stuck in straight line and triangle wonderland. I love this mani! Also, the color combo reminds me of Native American jewelry that I found in Santa Fe a few years ago, with nude, black, gold, and turquoise.

Sorry this post is going up late, I didn’t bring my laptop on my vacation last week so I only got around to editing this today! Oops 😀

That said, this really is not my best work! I had a decent idea of what I wanted going in, but I was impatient and the whole thing fell apart a bit. The design was created using stickers from the Born Pretty Store that I was sent to review. They work well, but there was a bit of a learning curve! Also I need a holo top coat. Trying to use this odd flakie one I have is just sad.